This project takes a research through design approach, presenting the design process of an interactive sonic installation – SoundEscape – mounted on a walking bridge in Ørstedsparken, Copenhagen. SoundEscape makes people interact with sounds from rural areas of Denmark into the middle of the city. Featuring speakers and motion sensors, the prototype uses people crossing the bridge as an input for building up a soundscape – layer by layer as the person detected moves on. SoundEscape is just one prototype exploring how people can build up a soundscape through their movement across the bridge. The paper suggest more areas of the interactive design space to explore. Designing the installation, we went through four phases: field research, exploration synthesis, and concept development. Participants where included in the process to collect sound input from rural areas in Denmark. In all phases, we kept a close dialogue with the context, grounding design decisions in the observations and explorations we did on the bridge. We made two tests of the prototype: on a mini-scale model and in the park context. The paper presents a framework for interactive sonic installations that are used to analyse SoundEscape and compares it with another sonic installation on a bridge that have a different form of interactivity. Based on this analysis, the findings from the design process, and the two tests, the paper discuss the interactivity in the prototype. The paper suggest how the interactions with the soundscape can be further extended.

<p>Bilaga: 1 CD.</p>

On appelle installation sonore une forme d'art multimédia dans laquelle l'accent est mis en particulier sur l’aspect sonore, sans pour autant ignorer toutes les autres composantes qui constituent l’installation. Bien qu’elle soit une forme classée parmi les arts plastiques, l’installation sonore se rapporte plutôt à l’art sonore. En effet, l’art sonore se caractérise par la prééminence de l’usage du son comme moyen d’expression et comme préoccupation artistique (le grand nombre de manifestations, de blogs et de festivals d’art sonore en témoignent). Parmi les pratiques expérimentales ayant trait à l’art sonore, une nette préférence va à l’installation sonore et il semblerait qu’elle devienne une forme d’art en soi. On peut s’interroger sur la possibilité d’envisager ceci de cette manière. Dans cette thèse, il faut comprendre l’installation sonore comme une pratique artistique hétérogène, interdisciplinaire, expérimentale et hybride, pratique qu’on retrouve dans l’installation artistique en général. Cependant, on peut constater que des préoccupations reviennent souvent : la visualisation du son, la perception de l’espace à travers le sonore, l’écoute et sa relation avec la position et le déplacement du corps de l’auditeur. Afin de contribuer à une plus grande compréhension d’une culture sonore contemporaine qui est largement partagée, le propos de cette thèse est d’étudier les divers domaines auxquels l’installation sonore appartient et ceci à partir de plusieurs points de vue : historique, esthétique, culturel et médiatique. / Sound installation is an inter media-based art form that draws particular attention to the component of sound, although not at the expense of its visual underpinnings. Considering that it is a form of art, sound installation refers to sound art, an area that requires separate recognition and independence among existing art forms, due to the use of sound as a means of expression as well as the current artistic preoccupation with it (as reflected in the growing number of sound art demonstrations, blogs and festivals).Among the different experimental practices within sound art, sound installation is clearly favored, thus it would appear that it is becoming an art form in itself. Could it be seen in this way? In this thesis, Sound Installation is viewed as a current art form connected to “Art installation”, a field with its own characteristics: heterogeneous, multi-disciplinary, experimental and hybrid. However, as a singular art form, it is a source of insight, which emerges repeatedly and is amplified by the exploration of both sound and sound perception; for example, sound imaging, the perception of space through sound, listening and its relationship to the position of the listener’s body in space. The purpose of this thesis is to approach the field in which Sound Installation belongs from different perspectives such as history, aesthetics, culture and media. With the question of how to conceptualize sound components always in mind, we intend to contribute to the understanding of an ever –growing contemporary culture of sound.

Sonic Activation is a multimedia performance-installation featuring sound sculptures, video projections, and performance with live electronics for solo and mixed ensembles. The work aims to unpack the nature in which we hear and interact with sound, space, and gesture. It is a project that recontextualizes the typical practice of performance and installation modes of music and art. The event uses 12 loudspeakers spaced around a gallery to create a densely layered sonic atmosphere that gently fluctuates and slowly evolves. Throughout the event, the audience is encouraged to freely navigate the gallery and experience the subtle changes in sound as they manifest in the space.

This thesis explores an experimental music approach to writing autobiography. As a composition, Pilgrim Carnival took place as a travelling series of events. The central event was a sound installation for a blindfolded audience. This essay is a description of that series of events as well as a discussion of similar precedents in interdisciplinary art. Beginning with Luigi Russolo and Marcel Duchamp, aspects of autobiography are examined in both noise music and the concept of the ready-made artwork. Body Art of the 1970s, particularly the work of Marina Abramovic, is also tied into the idea of the ready-made artwork as an explicitly autobiographical example. The hybrid form of Pilgrim Carnival and the concept of ready-made autobiographical music create ongoing potential for new work.

No description available.

Through creative and theoretical research, this practice-led PhD project investigates the conditions that facilitate embodied sensory awareness within digital inter-media installation. Central to this exploration are questions concerning ‘immersion.’ The research uses this term to describe a transformation in perception that allows us to shake off representational and symbolic meaning in favour of embodied, sensory and intuitive awareness within an installation space. Drawing from embodied memories of immersion in natural and spiritual environments, I consider the elements that contributed to these experiences and ask whether it is possible to create this sense of immersion in art. I then consider the elements that produce immersive, inter-media environments including space, sound, light, and projected moving images. Drawing on theoretical and artistic precedents, I propose a set of principles for producing a sense of embodied sensory immersion. The practical outcomes of the research - three digital inter-media installations included in the exhibition, in an other light - incorporate different combinations and treatments of these material elements to investigate and test the proposed principles.

Note sequence morphing is the combination of two note sequences to create a ‘hybrid transition’, or ‘morph’. The morph is a ‘hybrid’ in the sense that it exhibits properties of both sequences. The morph is also a ‘transition’, in that it can segue between them. An automated and interactive approach allows manipulation in realtime by users who may control the relative influence of source or target and the transition length. The techniques that were developed through this research were designed particularly for popular genres of predominantly instrumental electronic music which I will refer to collectively as Mainstream Electronic Music (MEM). The research has potential for application within contexts such as computer games, multimedia, live electronic music, interactive installations and accessible music or “music therapy”. Musical themes in computer games and multimedia can morph adaptively in response to parameters in realtime. Morphing can be used by electronic music producers as an alternative to mixing in live performance. Interactive installations and accessible music devices can utilise morphing algorithms to enable expressive control over the music through simple interface components. I have developed a software application called LEMorpheus which consists of software infrastructure for morphing and three alternative note sequence morphing algorithms: parametric morphing, probabilistic morphing and evolutionary morphing. Parametric morphing involves converting the source and target into continuous envelopes, interpolation, and converting the interpolated envelopes back into note sequences. Probabilistic morphing involves converting the source and target into probability matrices and seeding them on recent output to generate the next note. Evolutionary morphing involves iteratively mutating the source into multiple possible candidates and selecting those which are judged as more similar to the target, until the target is reached. I formally evaluated the probabilistic morphing algorithm by extracting qualitative feedback from participants in a live electronic music situation, benchmarked against a live, professional DJ. The probabilistic algorithm was competitive, being favoured particularly for long morphs. The evolutionary morphing algorithm was formally evaluated using an online questionnaire, benchmarked against a human composer/producer. For particular samples, the morphing algorithm was competitive and occasionally seen as innovative; however, the morphs created by the human composer typically received more positive feedback, due to coherent, large scale structural changes, as opposed to the forced continuity of the morphing software.